Show us your VR battlestations

VR is finally here .

. Oculus Rifts are shipping out in waves, and the HTC Vive’s full release is imminent, with units set to land early next week. PC gamers lucky enough to grab their own futuristic HMDs right away are no doubt ready to jack in, forget about their former lives, and start a new one in Lucky’s Tale.

Before anyone pops that virtual cartoon squirrel the big question, they’ll have to get their gaming setup properly ready for VR, and neither headset is exactly simple to accommodate. The Oculus Rift requires some desk spacefor the sensor and plenty of wiggle room to avoid bashing your head against the desk, while the Vive’s room-scale experiencerequires, well, a room.

Space or no space, PC gamers are an inherently resourceful group, so we’re putting a call out to you, our lovely readers: show us your VR battlestations! Link to pictures in the comments , and if we’re impressed by your VR den we’ll feature it in a roundup of our favorites.

Haven't committed to the VR craze quite yet? Take a look at our guide for building a VR rig on the cheap, and get back to us.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning trailer talks sidequests and world-building

Main quests are overrated.

Main quests are overrated. You'll probably get to save the world, perhaps fight a dragon or two along the way and all that jazz. We've done that all before. The real treasure lies off the beaten path, in all the extra quests and characters you discover for yourself.

Rubbish sidequests can feel like padding, which makes the whole game world feel insubstantial. Conversely, good sidequests can make a game world feel vast and interesting. We'll have to wait and see which camp Kingdom's of Amalur falls into. Will we be killing giant rats in cellars for meagre coin, or vanquishing sky-demons for magical plate-mail? US players will find out on February 7. It's out on February 10 in Europe.

Company of Heroes 2 British Forces free trial announced

The British Forces will hit Company of Heroes 2's multiplayer scene on September 3, but if you want to try out the standalone multiplayer expansion before then, there's a free trial period running from August 31 to September 2 on Steam.

Relic says that "up to 55,000" players will get the chance to marshal the Brits' 15 units and new commanders in live combat across the eight new maps. CoH2 chooses to interpret the tactical choices available to British commanders as a "hammer and anvil" system which shifts the weight of your upgrades to favour mobile troops or emplacements and artillery respectively.

Perhaps most importantly, commandos will return, and they still plough suicidally onto the map in a big shonky glider. That's a nice callback to Company of Heroes 1, but there will be plenty of new units, accessed through build trees and commander upgrades. The expansion will cost $12.99 / £9.99. Here are a few shots showing new units and a map featuring a large, intricate castle to fight in.

Save the President from the Evil Clutches of Canada in Cold Vengeance

For those fortunate enough to live through the 80’s and 90’s, a fond recollection of action movies exists.

For those fortunate enough to live through the 80’s and 90’s, a fond recollection of action movies exists. They were over the top, absurd, and entertaining. These themes were also prevalent in games of that time. Developer Alec Stamos’s newest game, Cold Vengeance, is a 3D run-and-gun shooter that brings players back to that era. A sequel to, the game is set in the year 200X.

A totalitarian government has risen to power in Canada. They’ve kidnapped the President of the United States, launched a surprise attack on America, and bombed major cities while sending in an army of robots. But that’s not all; they’ve formed an alliance with the mysterious Ninja Empire. Players step into the boots of Sgt. Jon Dagger, a lone soldier who must travel through the ruins of America and into the frozen tundra that is Canada. The mission is to save the President. Fear not, our hero isn’t alone in this task. He’ll be joined by a former Soviet engineer who has uploaded himself into the brain of Sgt. Dagger. Players will run and gun their way through a variety of environments while fighting Canadian soldiers, post-apocalyptic barbarians, ninjas, and robots.

Cold Vengeance is currently up for voting on Steam Greenlight. The game is excepted to launch mid-2016 for both PC and Mac. No official pricing details have been released yet. To learn more about the game and developer Alec Stamos visit his official website, Facebook, and Twitter.

Monthly User Decline For Popular Facebook Games CityVille, Empires & Allies

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning demo now available

Looking for a big new fantasy RPG to play?

Looking for a big new fantasy RPG to play? Kingdoms of Amalur might just fit the bill. A new demo is now available on Steam, giving everyone a chance to dive in and fight the various things that live in artist Todd McFarlene's head. There's a "destiny" system that lets you switch between combat styles in the middle of a ruck, and there should be plenty of mad weapons to mess with. Completing the demo should unlock some bonus items for Mass Effect 3as well.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is available to pre-order now. If you grab it on Steamyou'll get some Team Fortress 2 hats. The Origin pre-ordercomes with nine weapons designed to "give players an edge from the start. It'll be released on February 10, here's a pic of those TF2 hats.

Commandos, tanks and top swearing in CoH2: The British Forces

The British Forces is a standalone multiplayer expansion for Company of Heroes 2.

is a standalone multiplayer expansion for Company of Heroes 2. You might see some reviews for the expansion appearing today, but we're waiting to see how the new army performs in a live multiplayer environment this weekend before assigning a score when the pack is released on September 3. Here are some impressions from the single-player skirmishes I've played so far.

The British Forces commando drop is one of the most spectacular things you can do in an RTS, and this is a genre that lets you build huge spider bots and crash moons into planets. Instead of parachuting troops into enemy territory, the ingeniously bonkers British solution crashes a glider full of special forces onto a street. First there's the noise: the plunging scream of the incoming plane. Then it smashes into the ground, losing its wings to the surrounding buildings. Then the vessel comes to a screeching halt, and commandos matter-of-factly hop out of a hatch at the back and try to kill everyone nearby.

It's a bold move. Crazy, even. But with a few upgrades the commando drop becomes Company of Heroes 2's loudest and flashiest smash-and-grab solution. With the correct investment the drop can be presaged by a preparatory recon flight and a strafing run from a pair of Hawker Tornadoes. The torrent of machinegun fire instantly pins enemy forces in the vicinity, leaving them exposed to the short-range killing potential of the commandos' Stens. Another upgrade turns the remains of the glider into a forward base that resupplies friendly squads. Point a commando drop at a victory point and you can make it your home in minutes.

The commando drop is very much the "hammer" of the British Forces' branching "hammer and anvil" doctrines. These divergent base upgrades let you choose between aggressive unit types and expanded building powers, but both options feel more defensive than other Company of Heroes 2 armies. British forces excel at holding ground and then softening up enemies with bombardment. This turtling tendency is reflected in the potent cover bonuses afforded to ordinary infantrymen, and an upgrade that lets them throw a flare to call in explosive support from artillery cannons mounted on your base. Hold-and-bombard

I've been having great fun with the British in conventional one-vs-one AI battles so far; it's fun to lock down sections of the map with Bofor emplacements and repel assaults with crunchy artillery barrages. Against soft targets, the British are terrifying. The Churchill Crocodile flamethrower tank spews liquid fire at surprising range and burst-fire artillery and flame mortars can dig infantry out of cover quickly. It's also interesting to work around the limitations of the British Forces, particularly the frailty of their armoured divisions.

The Brits can field various iterations of the Churchill and Cromwell tank lines but both falter when facing powerful German tanks. This gives the British the potential to fade in the late game when the map turns into tank town. Their anti-tank infantry options, such as the haphazard spring-action PIATs, struggle to reliably hold back heavy tanks, so the British must rely on stationary heavy anti-tank emplacements and the expensive-but-amazing Sherman Firefly: a variant of the stalwart US tank which bolts on a ludicrously huge 17-pounder gun and optional rockets.

The British Forces expansion follows CoH2's tendency to pick out the most interesting troops and vehicles of the period, not just the most conventional. Relic decided to add the AEC Mk 2 armoured car after seeing the vehicle in Ardennes during a press tour. The vehicles are beautifully modelled, and a number of new weapon effects have been added to sell the new ordnance. Armour-penetrating rounds have their own characteristic noise and feel, and the Crocodile's oily jets of flame recall the horror of the original weapon. The army's most extreme bombardments are some of the biggest in the game so far.

The British Forces have a lot of character too, thanks to some top swearing. Troops hail from different regions of the UK. The royal engineers are from Wales; commandos are from Ireland. Officers deliver understated warnings in clipped queen's english while infantrymen sit in ditches and go on about wanking. The British Forces' ability to comically insult each other under fire is frequently hilarious. Few RTS games try to endear you to your units, but the rapport makes battles feel more meaningful.

The expansion also includes eight new maps, mostly spread across Germany. The dark, industrial zones such as the port of Hamburg feel quite familiar, but deform in new ways when blown apart by artillery. The prettier maps are set in rural areas, and modders will benefit from new terrain pieces such as picturesque German houses and castle ruins that offer claustrophobic and tense infantry scuffles. I can't wait to drop commando gliders on all of them when the multiplayer servers go live.

Yes, you can play Pokemon Go on PC

If Reddit, our Twitter feeds, and pretty much every other post on most general gaming sites are any indication, a lot of people are playing Pokemon Go right now.

If Reddit, our Twitter feeds, and pretty much every other post on most general gaming sites are any indication, a lot of people are playing Pokemon Go right now. The mobile-exclusive augmented reality game gets players up and physically walking around their towns to hunt down Pokemon randomly scattered about. And, in the great tradition of all Nintendo games, it's never coming to PC.

But this time things are different. This time we can join the masses in what is shaping up to be a genuine cultural phenomenon. And we can do it in true PC gaming fashion: using a bootstrapped emulator without ever leaving our desks.

Full credit for this goes to YouT uber Trav is D, who created a tutorial video (shown below) and a detailed set of instructions on how to get it working. Essentially what you need to do is use the Android phone emulator BlueStacksto run the game from your PC, but it's not quite that simple. You then have to root that virtual android device so you can install an app that allows you to fake your GPS location, thus being able to take advantage of the core mechanic of Pokemon Go—real world movement.

It's not quite as complex as it all sounds and looks—getting it up and running took me about 20 minutes—but let me be abundantly clear when I say that it's not a perfect solution. While all the functionality is there and (for the most part) working, it's still not the way the game was meant to be played. For one thing, you have to tab out of the game and reload the GPS faker every time you want to move. For another, playing Go without actually walking around outside undermines the vast majority of what makes the game so appealing.

It takes some tweaking to get working, crashes occasionally—though I hear that's a problem with the mobile version too—and if you jump around too fast the game might give you a temporary ban. Although the game is free, this is definitely against the terms of service for Pokémon Go , so use at your own risk. Per the TOS, players cannot "attempt to access or search the Services or Content, or download Content from the Services through the use of any technology or means other than those provided by Niantic or other generally available third-party web browsers."

If you absolutely must catch 'em all (in the least-enjoyable way possible), you can watch Travis D's tutorialvideo below.

Travis D's guideprovides a deeper walkthrough of the many steps required to emulate the game on PC. Be warned that spoofing your GPS location with this method can lead to a ban on your account . Seriously, there's almost no benefit to doing this. Many readers have chimed in to let us know that bans for GPS spoofing were common in the developer's previous game, Ingress.

VR hardware sales predicted to soar past $2 billion by end of year

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Mass Effect 3 demo to unlock Kingdoms of Amalur armour, and vice versa

Demos for Mass Effect 3 and Kingdoms of Amalur are due to arrive shortly, the perfect excuse for another weird pan-series promotional deal.

and Kingdoms of Amalur are due to arrive shortly, the perfect excuse for another weird pan-series promotional deal. When you boot up the Mass Effect 3 demo, you'll get access to a version of Shepard's famous N7 armour in fantasy RPG, Kingdoms of Amalur. Beat the demo and you'll unlock a pair of "Omniblades" which look just like Shepard's glowing techno arm-spikes.

It goes the other way, too. Playing the Kingdoms of Amalur demo will grant you Reckoner Knight Armour and a "Chakram Launcher" in Mass Effect 3. Both items are designed by comic book artist Todd McFarlene. Get a closer look at all the bonus gear in the screenshots below.

Once upon a time you'd buy a game and play the game, and that would be that. Big modern releases are sprawling multimedia assaults wrapped in pre-order deals, tie in iPhone games and cross-series promotions. The Dragon Age Dead Space armourwas especially odd, but nothing's managed to beat the Force Unleashed/Monkey Island crossoveryet. What do you think of these cross-promotional bonus deals, a bit of fun or a bit too much?

Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces trailer introduces emplacements

Here's the last in Relic's series of videos introducing the new units of Company of Heroes 2's upcoming multiplayer expandalone, The British Forces.

Here's the last in Relic's series of videos introducing the new units of Company of Heroes 2's upcoming multiplayer expandalone, The British Forces. This time, it's all about emplacements—that's your mortars, your anti-tank guns, and your AA. Basically, all the stuff designed to make other stuff explode.

Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces will be out on September 3. For a further look at what it's all about, check out Ian's hands-on previewor watch the previous "Know Your Units" videos below.

The best free games of the week

A sinister cult, a competitive burger stand, mini mighty Jill Offs and a weirdo spaceship coalesce in this week's column.

A sinister cult, a competitive burger stand, mini mighty Jill Offs and a weirdo spaceship coalesce in this week's column. Read on for a game that lets you set your hat on fire, plus three other games that, sadly, don't. Enjoy!

The Aspect by backterria

It might look a bit like a Virtual Boy game in screenshots, but the fabulously moody The Aspect makes a lot more sense in motion. It's a very short platformer where you collect things from the environment, in order to perform some arcane ritual. Your cult might frequent the same tailors as the folks that make the ghost costumes for the hate-filled KKK, but as the itch.io page makes clear, "No it's not about the KKK". That settles that then. It's certainly a creepy costume though, and one that fits in with the sinister vibe of this nominal Metroidvania (it's like three screens big, before you get too excited). (Via Warp Door)

Mini Jill Off by Mozz

Mozz (it's not short for Morrissey...probably) has demade/remade/reimagined Auntie Pixelante's Mighty Jill Offas a Puzzlescript game. This is notable, because Mighty Jill Off is a platformer, and Puzzlescript is a turn-based puzzle game engine. Somehow, it works, and the result is another entry in the small-but-dedicated turn-based platformer genre. The puzzles here are smart, and eventually very tough, and the pixel art is bloody adorable.

Path of the Empyrean Pyre by Wandermayer

A very polished and very, very short first-personer where you poke around a derelict spaceship before making one important decision. Whether that decision makes any sense depends on how closely you listened to the game's twin narrators, who enPortal themselves into your head via radio feed. This is an unusual spaceship, full of runic text and glowing doodads, not to mention colours other than gunmetal grey and white. Explore! Choose! Then do it all again in order to witness the other ending.

Grab Them By The Eyes by Terry Cavanagh

Terry Cavanagh's latest funny, free browser game puts you in charge of a city burger stand. When a couple of hipster competitors turn up with a rival stand, you have to up your game in a bid for the hotly contested spot. You don't do this by increasing the relative yumminess of your burgers, oh no, but by shelling out for increasingly fancy signs. (Makes sense.) The fancier the sign, the more of Joe Public will be coerced into buying from your van rather than the schmoes across the way.

The system for buying and constructing signs is well-developed and a lot of fun—you'll need to constantly order new signs and accessories, to stop your customers from getting distracted and eating elsewhere. Emerge with the most customers at the end of a seven day period, and you get to keep your plot—fail, and you'll have to surrender it to your fashionable enemies.

GDC 2012 Debuts Hitman: Absolution , WB Games, Dear Esther Sessions

Kingdoms of Amalur video talks story, impales Elvis with lamp

http://youtu.be/jC6Lkl6gbZ0
Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - if you don't know - is a totally new RPG franchise developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning - if you don't know - is a totally new RPG franchise developed by 38 Studios and Big Huge Games. It's the brainchild of former Boston Red Sox pitcher (we think that has something to do with rounders) Curt Schilling, it also employs the talents of designer Ken Rolston (Oblivion), fantasy author R. A. Salvatore (The DemonWars Saga) and comic book artist and writer Todd McFarlane (Spawn) onboard.

It's a bit of an oddity - although it looks amazing, what we've seen so far feels a little derivative and staid. It's like a gorier version of Fable, or a gorier version of Oblivion, but there doesn't seem to be a particularly interesting angle to it. It could be that because it began life as an MMO its original ideas have been diluted, or there could simply be too many cooks spoiling the broth.

We'll give you a full lowdown on Amalur's scheduled release in February next year. In the meantime, a new video gives a behind-the-scenes look at the motion capture process with Marty Stoltz, the game's cinematic director. Who also owns the world's most amazing Elvis Presley lamp. Is that actually Elvis' plastinated head?

COH2: British Forces dev diary explains UK tactics

It's always interesting to hear people who aren't British talk about the country and its history.

It's always interesting to hear people who aren't British talk about the country and its history. In this dev diary, lead game designer Quinn Duffy talks about what historically set apart the British army and how that transfers to how they function in Company of Heroes 2: The British Forces.

Did you know that the British army was really good at defence? I do now. According to Duffy, "once they grabbed a piece of ground it was really rare for them to be pushed off it". Unlike the Commonwealth in Company of Heroes 1, however, this British army isn't solely defensive. They have a tech tree in which the player can choose between offensive and defensive branches, for example a fast armoured car or an anti-aircraft gun.

Of course, the way you really tell this army is British is the accents. Go toto hear it in action.

The British Forces expansion comes out on September 3. Ian's hands-on previewshould give you some idea of what to expect.

The best free games of the week

Survive this lousy Smarch weather by collecting crystal poetry, fighting velociraptors and spike pits, nomming garbage food with a cackling floating skull, and seeing a new (well, an old) perspective on Homeworld.

Survive this lousy Smarch weather by collecting crystal poetry, fighting velociraptors and spike pits, nomming garbage food with a cackling floating skull, and seeing a new (well, an old) perspective on Homeworld. Enjoy!

Diaries of a Spaceport Janitor by Sundae Month

Mort from Planescape: Torment accompanies you (maybe) in this "super early build" of Sundae Month's spaceport janitor game. There's not much to do, and there is lots of scenery to clip through, but there's the beginning here of something potentially very interesting—even if I'm not quite sure what that is yet. "You feel hungry," says the game, and you can satiate this hunger with stuff lying around the low poly desert environment. It's mostly eyeballs at the moment, which turn the screen woozy when gobbled and make it difficult to get about. I have no idea what's going on, or why that skull is following me, and I like that.

There was a Caveman by aamatniekss

TwaC (I love that acronym) is a little like a freebie demake of Volgarr the Viking; it's a difficult platformer set in prehistoric times, when friendly checkpointing hadn't been invented yet. I'm not convinced by the physics in this early alpha version—jumping seems to send you forward a little against your will, making it fiddly to land with precision—but if you're looking for a good, old-fashioned platformer and your significant other has frozen your bank account, then you're in luck. Well, not with the bank thing, but what I'm saying is that you can play TwaC for free. Chrome doesn't like it, of course, but that only means you should play it all the harder.

Hoplite Challenge Mode by Douglas Cowley

After hearing people bang on about Hoplite for must be, no exaggeration, ninety billion years , I finally have a chance to play it without buying an iWhatsit or upgrading my android phone. Or a version of it at least. Hoplite Challenge Mode takes the apparently-very-good puzzley tactical roguelike and mucks about with the mechanics, giving players a fixed bunch of skills for each level and asking them to survive, which is extraordinary difficult of course. Not having played the original Hoplite, I'm in alien territory, but if you have had the pleasure and you're up to a challenge, this seems like a mighty extension of Douglas Cowley's game. You're given absolutely no help, so reading up on the base game is a must. (Ta, RPS.)

Here Is Where I Carve My Heart by Kitty Horrorshow

HIWICMH (I'm all about the acronyms today) is Crackdown but with poetry, and also there's a giant ominous purple pyramid. Blessed with a lovely big jump, your aim is to collect those blue crystals, which emit a lovely sentence when picked up. "A solitary pyramid that exists to remind you that you are wondrous," offers Kitty Horrorshow, and surely we could all use one of those at some point. This is serene, enveloping, and very purple. I like jumping around on a pyramid, because why wouldn't I?

House Globe by Oxeye Game Studio

My definition of "the best free games of the week" is pretty loose, but I'm surprised it hasn't snapped with this latest gratis offering. House Globe was made in 2008, which is ages ago unless you're a time traveller (and if you are, I imagine you'd be too busy rolling around in money and assassinating Hitlers to bother reading this column). Having stumbled upon it this week though, it seemed like an apposite time to bring it to your attention, particularly given it's subject matter. It's a 2D, pixel art demake of Homeworld, the elegant space opera recently spruced up by Gearbox.

You can play multiplayer online, you can play on your own, but whichever mode you choose you'll be greeted by a superb realisation of Homeworld's glacial resource-gathering, building, and frigate-exploding action. It even begins with bloody Adagio for Strings! It might take a while to find an enemy in the sizable map, but you'll need the time to shore up your army, using the gorgeous build menu, which is narrated by a GLaDOS-like AI.

Tecmo Koei Acquires Atelier Developer Gust

Charting Progress: The History Of Animation At Naughty Dog

This feature was originally published on January 30th, 2015 but we wanted to resurface the content in honor of the release of the Uncharted collection on PS4.

Josh Scherr has worked at Naughty Dog for nearly fifteen years. Joining the studio to help animate Jak and Daxter, Scherr has had a front-row seat for the evolution of Naughty Dog's animating process. While he has now shifted roles and is helping write Uncharted 4: A Thief's End ( you can watch him discuss his new role here), Scherr helped shape and guide the revered studio from the days of cartoon-inspired key-frame animation for the Jak and Daxter series to the expertly detailed animation of Uncharted 4: A Thief's End.

Watch the video interview below ( or on YouTube) to learn about the stressful days of transitioning away from the Jak and Daxter era, the flaws Scherr now sees in Uncharted 1's animation, and what the future holds for animation at Naughty Dog.

To learn more about Uncharted 4: A Thief's End, click on the banner below to enter our hub that's filled with exclusive content.

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault trailer released

Relic has released the first game footage of the Company of Heroes 2 expandalone, Ardennes Assault.

Relic has released the first game footage of the Company of Heroes 2 expandalone, Ardennes Assault. If, like me, you watch Band of Brothers with an alarming regularity, you'll know the Battle of the Bulge as basically hell frozen over. Judging from this trailer, the upcoming single-player campaign will capture the frantic and gruelling mix of frantic battle and terrible conditions.

This is the first new single-player content for CoH2, after the multiplayer focused The Western Front Armies was released earlier this year. That pack introduced the US Forces and Oberkommando West to the game, and now this one will give them a sizeable 18-mission campaign.

For more on Ardennes Assault, check out Tom's first look preview. Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault will release on 18 November.

The Best Free Games of the Week

Stitch a riven world back together, assassinate jerking insects as Agent Frog 47, explore space prose and do two other mysterious things this week.

mysterious things this week. If you've settled yourself down into your free games papoose—you could also use a chair, I suppose—we can begin.

Stitcher by Christoph Schnerr and Jule Baetz

The text/translation could use a good going over in this inventive, detailed indie puzzler, but I just love the idea at its heart. You're a Stitcher, or a guy with a length of hemp that can be used to bind the sundered parts of an apocalyptic world together. Hemp can be acquired from the environment, but you can only carry so much—oh and it's only so effective, at least at the start. To stitch the severed islands back together, you first have to jump to move the Earth, then hit F or K to hurriedly sew the landmasses shut. I admire the mind that came up with that detail—this is a silly and sweet take on the end of the world.

Kram Keep by Knighty

Would you look at that! I'm a sucker for games that fit entire worlds onto one screen, and Kram Keep earns my deepest respect by being a perfectly readable game too. Somehow, you can find your character and tell everything that's going in this micro Metroidvania, and that's no small feat indeed. Even if it weren't all zoomed out like, this would be a pretty good platformer, with solid physics and art and a decent level of challenge for those brave enough to dive in.

Planeter by Ditto

Planetoids + gravity = oooooohhhhhh, that's lovely. And this is an equation that applies to Ditto's Planeter as well. It's a sort of puzzler in which you expand a solar system by ferrying things into switchy things, but it's actually a game about jumping between gravity wells, listening to catchy music, and making friends with the colourful aliens scampering around and around their spherical homes. Ditto's great at making games that feel weighty and solid, and that's true as ever here.

Johnston by Jake Clover

Jake Clover's atmospheric space game Space Pirate Dernshousgets a successor in the form of Johnston, a game of giant, giant text boxes and stories rather than fuel conversation and blowing stuff up. Wander into wormholes, suns, stations and other phenomena in the little craft that could, while you curse Jake Clover for not adding more line breaks or, at the very least, a slightly bigger font.

Frog Assassin by Auntie Pixelante

You're a frog that assassinates flies—so, in other words, you're a frog. Unlike in the real world, you can't just sit on a lilypad and wait for the insects to come to you; you're instead locked into a tiny rhythm-based pixel world. (Also the flies here will kill you, if you're not careful.) As Auntie Pixelante explains here, your enemies in this world jive to a regular beat. See how many you can take out, by bashing into them before they bash into you; it's a simple but tough matter of timing.

Oculus Rift consumer version revealed

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Five Ways Rise Of The Tomb Raider Improves Upon The Reboot

We're very excited to roll out a month of exclusive content for Rise of the Tomb Raider from Crystal Dynamics to go along with our extensive March cover story .

. The 2013 reboot really impressed usand we were curious about how the development team is looking to improve on that experience. While visiting the studio, we spoke to the creative director for the Tomb Raider franchise Noah Hughes about the feedback they received on the reboot and the key areas they're hoping to improve for the next entry.

Watch the video below to learn more about what they're changing and hoping to enhance for Lara's next big adventure.

Music in the video by Sam Keenan.

Click on the banner below below to enter our hub for exclusive content that will be rolling out throughout the month for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault

The standalone expansion for Company of Heroes 2 will give players another opportunity to thump the AI in a lengthy single-player RTS campaign set during the Battle of the Bulge.

The standalone expansion for Company of Heroes 2 will give players another opportunity to thump the AI in a lengthy single-player RTS campaign set during the Battle of the Bulge. It's significantly bigger than the Eastern front campaign included in CoH2, which makes the addition of unit permadeath especially challenging. If you lose a squad to a stray mortar, or a flanking heavy machine gun, they're not coming back for the next mission. If your veteran Sherman gets pancaked by an airstrike you'll leave its burned out remains on that battlefield forever. Good news, strategy fans, Company of Heroes is about to get harder.

An obvious first question for game director and Relic veteran, Quinn Duffy, then: if you keep throwing men recklessly to their doom, can you completely screw yourself before the campaign is done? “You can screw yourself over and you can sort of lose, and we've built it with the hardcore audience in mind for that. If you're looking for that type of experience, similar to XCOM, you can have that,” he says. “There's not a sort of hard line 'you just played a mission and completely screwed yourself', it's a lot of setbacks. When you get one of those setbacks the hope is the player's going to reassess their situation.”

I'm reminded of 1998's Warhammer: Dark Omen, which carried a particularly gruelling implementation of a similar system. It's a better fit for the US forces in the Ardennes, famously cut off from reinforcements during the siege of Bastogne. For lead campaign designer, Mitch Lagran, permadeath fulfils one key purpose: “we want there to be consequence to decisions. Consequence adds tension, it adds drama, it adds to that mission narrative because there's things at stake in a way that we haven't done.”

The sprawling nature of the Eastern front made it difficult to follow a single band of soldiers through the whole conflict. Ardennes is different. Your company levels up between missions, which will unlock rewards. Relic's designers aren't talking about what those rewards are yet, but it's easy to speculate based on the recently added war spoils system that lets you socket buffs into units to make them slightly better at shooting guns and ducking bullets. Thanks to the evolving company, and scarce, precious units, there's more reason to become invested in your army in Ardennes than any prior CoH campaign.

I watched Duffy and Lagran fight through a single mission in a heavy forest surrounding a snug Belgian village. Duffy performs an efficient cover-to-cover sprint up the right flank, shrinking back at the occasional appearance of a German half-track. The town is taken after a difficult, noisy exchange of grenades and gunfire. The battle is heavily weighted around infantry and close-quarters fighting, encouraged by the intricate layout of the townlet's narrow streets. I only see one run of the mission, but I'm told it can be approached in various ways. “You can go left, you can go right, you can go up the middle, you can cross over halfway and go up left. There are lots of pathways fighting in and around the village itself,” says Duffy.

“Each of those different routes actually has different styles of gameplay and different things that players can do there,” Lagran adds. “I've played the mission so many times, obviously. I've driven straight up the front right through the most heavily defended parts and I've done it pretty successfully, but it's a completely different experience from when I've gone left side and tried to do super-sneaky and stealth it.”

At a glance the US force closely resembles the one released in the recent Western Front Armies standalone multiplayer release, which marked a return for fan and dev favourites like Paratroopers and, as Duffy describes it, the “much-maligned” Sherman tank. This reflects a new “cadence” of releases that sees Relic building multiplayer armies, and then designing single-player campaigns around them later. The resulting campaign is hopefully better for the six months of player metrics and playtesting, but should also bring the single-player and multiplayer armies closer together. That ought to make it easier for players that traditionally only fight the AI to hop into CoH2's expanding multiplayer ecosystem, or so the designers hope.

Ardennes Assault marks the end of a busy year for Company of Heroes 2. Incremental updates have tightened up performance, a new server system has improved online drop rates, and numerous balance tweaks have polished it up very nicely. It's a promising trend for a game that wants to become a World War 2 platform, capable of travelling between the war's varied theatres over the course of a long life of updates. Blatantly fishing for clues on CoH's future, I ask Duffy how he pictures Company of Heroes 2 five years from now. “Vast,” he laughs. “It would be awesome if it was vast.”

Ardennes Assault will arrive November 18 as a standalone release.

The best free PC games

Welcome to our round-up of the best free games on PC.

Welcome to our round-up of the best free games on PC. As of March 2015, we've expanded our list from 50 to 75 to give you even greater choice. Think of this list as the perfect procrastination hub, packed with diversionary treats. Some are short and sweet, like Gravity Bone, some may consume you for weeks, like Spelunky.

All of the games on this list are free in their entirety. That means no microtransaction-supported free-to-play games and no shareware. We've also excluded 'pay what you want' games on the basis that developers who give you the ability to chip-in would probably like you to consider doing that. That said, there are always exceptions and you'll find games on this list that sit in a grey area – normally where there's a substantial free version with the option of also buying an upgraded paid edition. In these cases, we've gone with our hearts. Which is to say that we argued about it for hours.

Once we'd assembled our longlist we all voted for the games we liked the most and tallied up the scores to produce the list. The top games are the ones that have had the biggest impact on us, but that doesn't mean you won't find gems further down the list.

75. Refunktion: Episode 1

Developer: Dominique Grieshofer | www.bit.ly/Refunktion

Phil: Refunktion is a momentum-based first-person platformer that's part stealth, part Mirror's Edge and, most of all, an absolute bastard. Your job is to collect the power cores scattered around each level – running, sliding and wall-jumping to avoid the patrol-bots hunting you down.

There are two approaches. You can take things slow, using vents and cover to avoid being seen; or you can make a run for it, maneuvering around, under and over your enemies in an attempt to be too quick to kill. The latter is naturally more fun, but requires a level of skill I'm as yet unable to match.

The robots are a relentless foil. The slow, inevitable charge of their lasers provides just a small window of escape. Fail to break line-of-sight in time and you're instantly killed – forced to restart from the last checkpoint. It's frequently frustrating, and requires plenty of trial-and-error tactics. Despite all this, there's lots to appreciate. With a good build-up of momentum, Refunktion's satisfying freerunning makes up for its faults.

74. S.W.A.P.

Developer: Chaos Theory Games | Link: www.bit.ly/SwapGame

Phil: Swap, or Subterfuge Weapons Assessment Program, is a multiplayer twitch-based arena shooter that doesn't contain any guns. Instead, you fire your robot's hand at other players. If you hit, you'll swap places.

This is disorientating, and potentially deadly. For instance, if you've activated a trap, the person you swap with will then be killed by that trap. At least, they will if you hit them. Each map contains multiple hazards, punishing the unwary, as well as the recently swapped.

The player count is, unfortunately, a bit slim. Bring some friends to try it out.

73. Atom Smasher

Developer: Craig Perko | Link: www.bit.ly/AtomSmash

Phil: "It's pretty straightforward, you probably won't need a tutorial," says the creator of Atom Smasher in his tutorial video ( www.bit.ly/ASTutorial).That proved to be a massive overestimation of my ability to understand particle physics. After watching the tutorial, though, the game became a lot clearer. At its most basic level, it's a bit like Pipe Mania if Pipe Mania's ultimate goal was to unlock the secrets of all existence.

Your job is to build a series of increasingly complex particle colliders in an attempt to achieve each level's target speed. In the beginning, this is relatively simple. You add in some Microwave Klystrons, wire them up, and watch the MeV rating increase.

Soon, though, wiring becomes an issue. The game will always select the wire closest to the wall from the selection running above the machine. To combat this, you need to pull away unneeded cables, ensuring the correct colour matches the correct socket.

There's no penalty for it being wrong, other than the machine not working. At its core, Atom Smasher is a clever yet gentle puzzle draped in a science wrapping.

72. Fork Parker's Holiday Profit Hike

Developer: Dodge Roll | Link: www.bit.ly/ProfitHike

Phil: A word of advice to any aspiring CFOs: if your company's revenue is down for the year, releasing a free 2D platformer probably isn't the best solution. Luckily for Devolver Digital, the financial crisis depicted in Fork Parker's Holiday Profit Hike is as fictional as its protagonist. In it, the publisher's balding mascot Fork takes a break from his regular duties – cameoing in Serious Sam games and tweeting at Notch – to climb a nightmarish land filled with money, jagged icicles and deadly Christmas jumpers.

Your job is to collect as much money as possible while avoiding the many hazards hindering your ascent. To help achieve this you can throw out pitons: metal spikes that attach to surfaces to form a rope that extends between each subsequent piton placement. It's still extremely difficult, and every death results in unwanted medical bills that chip away at your possibly holiday profit.

71. VVVVVV – Make and Play Edition

Developer: Terry Cavanagh | Link: www.bit.ly/V6-MP

Phil: Terry Cavanagh's VVVVVV has been infuriating paying customers for years. Now, a version of it has been made available for free. Bad news: it doesn't contain the base game. Good news: that means you won't have to destroy keyboards while trying to complete its Veni, Vidi, Vici section.

Make and Play is a special edition of the gravity-flipping platformer that includes only the game's level editor and a selection of user created maps. As such, there's a huge amount of content to be played, even without the original campaign. These aren't single-room challenges, either – there are sprawling, multi-segment creations to tackle. The totality of it dwarfs what VVVVVV originally offered, although, if you own the main game, these player creations are also included as part of that package.

As always, your job is to collect trinkets and crew members across an 8-bit world of bizarre hazards and repeating geometry. Many of the user-made maps continue the intricate difficulty of the original's gravity-based challenges. Progress is hard won, but the community has embraced the spirit of VVVVVV's generous checkpointing. Even the most difficult sections need only be conquered the once.

70. I Know This

Developer: Two's Complement | Link: www.bit.ly/IKnowThis

Tom: There's a great bit in the original Jurassic Park where Lex infiltrates the park's security system, using what looks like another ridiculous mockup Hollywood hacking program. Well, it turns out this 'File System Navigator' was actually a real thing: a cool, and probably wildly impractical, way to explore a 3D representation of your PC.

Because we deserve it, a bunch of indie developers decided to turn this system into a real hacking game. The results are robust, tense, and a little bit gorgeous – hard drives seem so much bigger when their contents stretch out into the horizon.

Inspired by the ace hackertyper.net, the actual 'hacking' part of the game happens largely automatically, meaning you unlock files by randomly hammering at your keyboard. Occasionally, an Office Assistant-style paperclip will appear at the side of the screen, offering sound advice while wagging his finger at your law-breaking ways. It might seem a slim game beneath the slick presentation and that pleasing movie reference, but once you dig deeper into its mainframe, I Know This lives up to its inspiration and then some.

Pitfall! 's Crane: 'Never Any Doubt' Games Would Rebound After Crash

Exploring The New Setting Of Rise Of The Tomb Raider

Stepping up from his role as art director for the last entry, Brian Horton is now the game director on Rise of the Tomb Raider and is paying a lot of attention to the look of Lara Croft's new environment .

. Rise of the Tomb Raider takes players to Russia as Lara seeks a long-lost city and answers about the existence of the immortal soul. The new setting means new animals to hunt, new challenges to overcome, and new tech that the team had to create to make the world believable.

Watch the video interview below to learn more about the new world/worlds you'll explore and why wolves are always so hungry for tomb raiders.

Click on the banner below below to enter our hub for exclusive content that will be rolling out throughout the month for Rise of the Tomb Raider.

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault announced, relives Battle of the Bulge

Company of Heroes 2's latest standalone expansion was described by Winston Churchill as “undoubtedly the greatest American battle of the war.” Well, he wasn't referring to the expansion per se because Churchill is long dead (sorry to break it to you), but rather the battle it's based on—the Battle of the Bulge.

In this single-player expansion set in 1944, you control three US companies as they first defend against the relentless German Oberkommando West forces in the densely forested Ardennes, and then try to push them back out. Expect more dynamic weather, environmental destruction, and shouty men.

Over a whopping 18 scenarios, you have three entirely new US companies to utilise, each with their own unique play styles and officers. Choices matter in this chilly crucible. Apparently upgrades, units and Veterancy carry between missions, so lose what limited forces you have and they're gone for good.

“It's an innovative approach of developing content, separating the multiplayer which we shipped in June and now this one that's coming out in November. Having that space between them really allows us to focus on the best elements of each,” says Quinn Duffy, creative director. “We're producing more content this time.”

Company of Heroes 2: Ardennes Assault is set to drop November 18.

Grow Home sequel Grow Up gets release date

Grow Up, the follow-up to last year’s fun and frivolous physics platformer Grow Home (which may or may not have been a Freudian field day ), has a launch date.

First teased at E3last month, Ubisoft Reflections has now revealed we’ll be back in control of our favourite Botanical Utility Droid on August 16.

Whereas Grow Home involved BUD reoxygenating his homeworld, the sequel will see the droid “leaping acrobatically through a new open-world”, so say Ubisoft, as he strives to recover parts of his lost spacecraft. In doing so, he’ll take to a new glider-like “flying companion” named POD, and will get to grips with the Floradex 3000—a device that lets him clone the game’s planets, of which there are 24—in a bid to climb his way up to the moon.

Like its forerunner, it all sounds like good fun and if Grow Up manages to capture similar standards of intuitive platforming, I reckon we could be onto a winner. Shall we have another gander at the E3 announcement trailer? Let’s:

Grow Up is due to launch August 16.

The Darkness II preview: amusement park level brings a rollercoaster of super violence

At Gamescom, Digital Extremes gave us another taste of what's in store for Jackie Estacado in The Darkness II, and holy shit, it's ultra-violent. We're shown the Hellgate Field amusement park level where Jackie is off to track down some good-for-nothing named Viktor and his gang called The Brotherhood. This new pack of enemies aren't the usual fodder that Jackie and his death dealing tentacles are

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning preview

EA Partners Producer Ben Smith has just finished showing me a demo for upcoming action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.

EA Partners Producer Ben Smith has just finished showing me a demo for upcoming action RPG Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. He was playing it on a PC, using an Xbox controller. He's the second of Kingdom's high-profile developers to state the game's combat – a key feature - works better on a controller.

“I think that the combat really sings on the controller,” Ben states, before realising who he's said that to, “and the team's done a really fantastic job of getting a PC control scheme which we've user tested a few times now; and continue to learn new things to make it better. It's actually pretty good.”

He carries on. “It comes very close to giving you all the things at your fingertips that you would have on a controller.” He hesitates. “It's not… I don't think… as good… well, I don't know if that's the right word. It's not as… fluid or responsive… but it is good.”

Kingdoms of Amalur is no regular RPG. Developers Big Huge Games has broken away from traditional fantasy fighting systems, and implemented a combat style more akin to hack-and-slash titles such as Devil May Cry or God of War. “We feel that fighting and combat is really where we stand out in the genre,” explains Ben. “We don't take our inspiration from what other RPGs are doing. Instead, we looked at action games.” A bold move, and one that may not translate so well to the mouse and keyboard.

But, given that Big Huge Games' experience mainly comes with more conventional RPGs, why did they take a different approach to swordplay? Ben? “What we really wanted was to get the systems depth and the open world depth married to a combat system that is actually fun moment to moment.” An ambitious goal, and one that the producer recognises as demanding. “The challenge was difficult on it's own. An action combat system that works great with an RPG is no easy task.”

To tackle this dilemma, Big Huge Games set about hiring developers with serious experience in combat-led games. “Our lead combat designer is a tournament level Tekken player. His inspiration comes from fighting games, much like the guys who made action games, like God of War, who were also inspired by beat-em-ups. So when you see me do juggles, and interrupts, and you see me do launches, that's as much coming from a fighting game as an action game.”

It shows. Back to the demo, and Ben's character – a melee skilled rogue – has wandered into a cavern full of monsters. As he set about taking them apart, it became clear that powering through the nasties required more skill than simply hammering the 'hack' button. Timing was crucial – Ben ducked, dived and weaved around and (with the help of a speed buff) through the enemies, with all the agility and flair of the Prince of Persia. He easily switched from daggers to a long sword, throwing out magic spells as part of a combo chain. At the end of the combo, the rogue summoned rock spikes from the ground, skewering the luckless demon standing in the way.

I won't lie – the combat looks good. It's smooth, acrobatic and, above all, exciting; which is why I hope that the PC controls are just as good as Ben promises.

For those fearing that this focus on fighting will detract from Kingdoms' RPG roots – fret not. Combat isn't the only thing that Big Huge Games has lavished all their love and attention on. There's a whole open world to be explored – one designed by the Godfather of RPGs, Ken Rolston, and written by award winning Forgotten Realms author R.A. Salvatore. Better still, Spawn creator and avid doodler Todd McFarlane is responsible for the artistic direction. With this trifecta of heavyweight names, it's hard not to become giddy with excitement.

The game's premise is equally intriguing. In the opening moments, you wake up on a pile of corpses. But rather than this being the result of an average Friday night, you've actually been brought back to life in the Well of Souls – but why? Here's the kicker – you've been reborn with no fate, which is a pretty big thing in Amalur lore. You're special, so very special that the world itself recognises that you're a freak. What the hell are you doing here? And it's this burning question is – literally – your raison d'etre, forming the base of your epic quest.

Supporting this investigatory quest are all the usual RPG machinations. In-depth character customisation, side quests, faction quests, dialogue options, three crafting systems that encompass potions, armour, weapons and stat-buffing crystals. There's persuasion skills, fast travel, entire armour sets to accrue, inventory management, and choices to make, ranging from 'shall I do jail time for picking that pocket, or smash up the local fuzz?' to bigger, game changing decisions. And there's loot. Sweet, sweet loot.

There are also three core ability trees for you to tinker with, that allow you to create a character tailored to your way of playing. Enjoy the manly art of swordplay? Invest your points in weaponry to unlock gut-busting attacks. Feel more comfortable with magic? Blast through the Sorcery tree to learn huge spells like Meteor.

Returning to the demo, and all of these things slot together rather nicely, with the spit and polish you'd expect of an executive designer with Oblivion and Morrowind in his blood. As Ben manoeuvres his rogue around Brigenhall Caverns, it's a genuine pleasure to see a fantasy RPG that's bright and colourful, rather than toting dull browns and greens that recent titles seem to love. It feels odd to say this, but even the generic cave I was being shown through was gorgeous. Purple mushrooms gently glowed in the dark, a waterfall shimmered away in the distance, and grassy blue plants twisted towards our hero's feet as he rifled through an unsuspecting bandit's pocket.

The monsters themselves have a rather unique style, again standing out from other RPGs' catalogue ordered minions. There are no genero-orcs and standard skeletons here. Okay, there were a few skeletons, but they've got jaunty horned helmets, so that's excused. Todd McFarlane's influence really does show, and as a result, Amalur's kingdom feels genuinely alive and magical.

It may be a bitter pill for purists to swallow, but introducing hack-and-slash style combat to a traditional genre doesn't make Kingdoms of Amalur any less of an RPG. If anything, it makes it far more fun. My only worry is how such an ambitious system will work out on keyboard. But Ben has the final word on this issue. “In some ways, there are options on the PC side that you don't have access to as easily as with the limited controls we have on a controller. In some ways you can have more abilities slotted into the top. So there are advantages you get from being on a PC that you don't get on console. Or you can always plug in a 360 controller.” He laughs. I shake my head. “That's just dirty,” I reply.

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning is due out early next year.

Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies release date announced, will reinforce multiplayer next month

It's a worrying sign that we can have favourite wars; that people can sit around the pub, aggressively arguing that the dramatic impact of aerial warfare makes World War 2 a better conflict than the American Civil War, despite its pioneering use of railroads.

It's a worrying sign that we can have favourite wars; that people can sit around the pub, aggressively arguing that the dramatic impact of aerial warfare makes World War 2 a better conflict than the American Civil War, despite its pioneering use of railroads. At least Relic are doing their part to alleviate inter-war tension with Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies—a standalone multiplayer expansion that leaves behind CoH2's Eastern front setting in favour of CoH1's Western lands. If you prefer to battle across the sunnier side of Europe, you'll be able to do so when the expandalone reports for duty on June 24th.

As the name implies, the expansion allows CoH2 multiplayer fans to fight across the Western front, adding the US forces and the German Oberkommando. It also shares a map pool with regular Company of Heroes 2, meaning—whether you own either or both—you can be automatched onto any of the maps alongside any army. Owners of The Western Front Armies are able to play the new armies, each with new weapons, infantry, vehicles and upgrades, as well as create custom games on the new maps.

Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies will cost £15 / $20.

Overcooked to serve culinary chaos come August 3

Overcooked is a frantic single-player or co-op cooking game where you’re tasked with zipping around kitchens, cooking and serving food, and ultimately trying your damnedest not to set things on fire.

Overcooked is a frantic single-player or co-op cooking game where you’re tasked with zipping around kitchens, cooking and serving food, and ultimately trying your damnedest not to set things on fire. In my experience, preventing the latter is easier said than done.

Today, publisher Team 17 announced Overcooked will arrive on PC via Steam on August 3, bringing with it 28 solo campaign levels, an end boss, nine local versus stages for two or four players, 14 different playable chefs, and a range of challenging kitchens within which to perform (or fail to perform) your trade. Here's some of that in practice:

Besides the odd fire, I must admit the folk playing there seem pretty adept in handling shape-shifting kitchens and calamitous cooking. Conversely, my experience mainly consisted of failing to conquer the art of soup and sliding around on dropped tomatoes, as I blamed the three strangers I played alongside for the blazing fire in the corner of the kitchen.

Overcooked is due to launch on Steamfor £12.99/$16.99/15,99€ on August 3. Pre-orders are available from 6pm BST/10am PT today.

Replica is a detective game about privacy, investigation, moral dilemma

Replica is a neat detective point-and-click-style game where all of its action unfolds via the interface of a mobile phone screen.

Replica is a neat detective point-and-click-style game where all of its action unfolds via the interface of a mobile phone screen. Because who needs Pokemon GO, right? (Even if we can now get it on our PCs.)

The plot here is a touch more serious, though. The phone you’re in control of isn’t yours, but is that of a suspected terrorist. After being contacted by an unknown, mysterious government employee, you’re directed around the owner’s private details via social media apps—that replicate the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram—and are then ordered to uncover sensitive information found in email accounts and text message conversations.

As you delve deeper into the game, sifting through seemingly genuine and innocuous chatter between someone else’s friends and family becomes slightly unnerving—even considering the game's terrorism context—and calls into question the wider implications of surveillance and breaches of privacy. It’s an interesting idea and one which really gets you thinking.

Replica is out now on Steamand Itchfor £1.99/$2.99/2,99€.

The Darkness II first-look preview

Our first real glimpse of The Darkness II was, interestingly, of darkness – along with a strange, rhythmic ringing sound. Someone started talking, and the dark faded away as Jackie Estacado – the reluctant, super-powered gangster who was fused with the demonic Darkness entity in the first game – opened his eyes to see the source of the ringing: a railroad spike was being driven into his own left hand

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning release date announced

More breaking news from the EA conference, Kingdoms of Amalur has just had a release date announced, it'll be with us on 10th of February 2012, just in time for the new year. Interested? Check out our preview.

Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies trailers reintroduce you to familiar forces

Chances are you already know about the two forces at the centre of Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies.

Chances are you already know about the two forces at the centre of Company of Heroes 2: The Western Front Armies. Germany and the US previously fought out their differences in the first Company of Heroes, in 90% of all FPS games made before 2007, and in real-life history. If you do need a refresher, watching two two-minute trailers probably isn't going to help. If, instead, you just need to see some tanks and explosions, they're practically perfect.

The Western Front Armies is a standalone multiplayer expansion, adding the two above forces, and their weapons, infantry, vehicles and upgrades. It will also introduce new maps that will be made available to owners of the original CoH2, ensuring that multiplayer is compatible across the two titles. The expansion is due out on June 24th, and will cost £15/$20/AU$29.95.

GDC 2013 reveals talks from Amnesia 's Grip, Epic's Mielke

E3 2011: Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning trailer you may have missed

[bcvideo id="979338098001"]
Blimey, that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning trailer flew past didn't it?

Blimey, that Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning trailer flew past didn't it? I was expect some more info on the game but they got hurried off the stage to make way for the next guy. If you'd like a second chance to catch the thing, take a look.

Massive Half-Life 2 add-on Prospekt releases February

Push Half-Life 3 to the back of your mind, where it surely spends most of its time these days.

to the back of your mind, where it surely spends most of its time these days. How about some new Half-Life 2? Indie dev Richard Seabrook has spent the past two years working on a continuation of Gearbox's Half-Life 1: Opposing Forcestory, and the result, Prospekt, is said to match Half-Life 2: Episode One in length. February 11 is the big day.

At one point in Prospekt's development, Seabrook loaded it onto memory sticks, packed them in a briefcase adorned with the lambda logo and dispatched it to Gaben. He did not hear back. After passing through Greenlight, however, Prospekt gained Valve's nod of approval for the licence and assets.

As Gordon Freeman is cornered in Nova Prospekt, the Vortigaunts teleport US Marine Adrian Shepherd into the fray to give him a fighting chance. That's you. In total, Prospekt has 13 levels (including a return to Half-Life 1's Xen, which the long-running Black Mesa project is still working on) and upgrades the visuals of the original setting.

Prospekt will cost £7.50/$10. You don't need to own Half-Life 2 to play, but I'm saying that you should own Half-Life 2, you strange maverick.

Making The 2013 Game Infarcer Cover

Our April issue is now available , and that means readers are checking out our annual Game Infarcer parody feature.

, and that means readers are checking out our annual Game Infarcer parody feature. Just like our real magazine, the cover of Infarcer is a big deal, and now you can read about how it was created.

For 2013, the talented Zander Cannon (of Double Barrel) returned to bring our bizarre vision to life. Once again, he took a hilariously awful sketch (drawn by me, I'm sorry to admit) and transformed it into an excellent image that captures the heart of the joke.

To read about the artistic side of Cannon's process, check out his Making Of feature. When you're done, why not read about how Zander made our 2012 cover? How about the 2010 edition? You can even support his latest project,!

BioWare developer proposes to his girlfriend via Minecraft

So you think you're a romantic, eh? A regular Don Juan Demarco? Far be it for us to suggest otherwise, but after watching this Minecraft marriage proposal crafted by a developer at BioWare, you may feel inclined to step up your game. The Minecraft level was created by a love-struck BioWare staffer named Joel Green (aka mcnerdburger) for a fellow dev, Heather Rabiatch, at BioWare's Edmonton studio

New Blizzard Ads Seeking Diablo III Console Devs

Half-Life 2: Episode 4 is still cancelled, but here are some new screenshots

Pining for Half-Life 2: Episode 3 is so passe.

passe. I'm more interested in Episode 4, which was being developed by Arkane until it was killed for being too good for this world. Or, for sensible reasons as revealed by Valve's Marc Laidlaw three years ago. It was to return players to Ravenholm, hence the name 'Return to Ravenholm', and some legit-looking screenshots seemed to bear that out.

I'm not just bringing this up to open old wounds—some new screenshots have been unearthed courtesy of those scamps at ValveTime. There are 11 of the beggars, purportedly taken from the portfolio of one Robert Wilinski, a Senior Environment Artist who was at Arkane between 2007 and 2008. You've already seen one above, but here are a few extra of the more interesting ones. (Having said that, they're all a bit boring—damned sewer levels.) Click this link, or watch the following video, for the others.

There are also a couple of images reportedly of Arkane's similarly cancelled The Crossing. It wasn't Half-Life related, but at least it wasn't set in a bloody sewer.